Putting a fishing line through a hook eyelet is problematic for several reasons including, but not limited to, poor vision or blindness, exceedingly small hook eyelets, night fishing, low lighting conditions, standing upright on an unruly boat or floatation device while threading a hook, motion from a rocking boat, canoe, or kayak, high wind conditions, and additional possible distractions.
Fishermen historically have sometimes used tweezers to assist with threading fish hooks. However this approach of using tweezers does not resolve most of the problematic aspects of threading fish hooks given various conditions. For night fishing and many other conditions, threading a hook can be frustrating and time consuming, time not spent actually fishing.
When fishing for walleye in the spring, using a live-bait presentation, size 8 or 10 hooks are common, while bass fishermen use 1/0 to 2/0 hooks for baiting shiners or minnows. Size 8 to size 12 hooks are commonly used to catch bluegills. An easy to use hook threading apparatus has long been needed to address the hooks and other sizes too.
A wide range of fish hooks sizes are standardized. Hooks are classified by “sizes”—for example, a size 1 hook is larger than a size 7, while a 1/0 is smaller than a 7/0 (pronounced 7-aught). The smallest exemplary standard sizes available are 32 and the largest 20/0.
The slash symbol (/) defines a hook as grouped within the “aught” measurement system. As defined in aughts, the higher the number, the larger the hook. A 1/0 hook is bigger than a size 1. They ascend in accordance to their increased size. Therefore, a #6/0 hook is larger than #2/0, but an ordinary #6 is smaller than #2.
Hooks are also made from various wire gauges or thickness. They run from very thin wire to thicker gauge wire, for example: fine wire, heavy wire, extra heavy, 2× heavy, 3× heavy, 4× heavy and higher. Hooks made from thinner or fine wire have correspondingly smaller eyelet diameters and even smaller openings. Smaller eyelet opening sizes are harder to thread and thinner hook shanks are harder to grasp or hold for alignment or positioning.
The anatomy of the hook is as follows: The point is the sharp end that penetrates the fish's mouth. To achieve the point, the hooks are either mechanically or chemically sharpened. Some hooks are barbless to make hook removal easier and less stressful to the fish. Jutting off the point is the barb, which is a sharp tip that prevents the hook from backing out. The eye connects the hook to the fishing line, which is achieved by using any one of a variety of knots. The shank is the portion of the hook that connects the point and the eye; the gape or gap describes the distance between the shank and the point. Some of these features often describe the type of the hook, for instance, a long shank hook, a wide-gap hook or an offset eye hook.
Hooks are manufactured from many different metals such as high carbon steel, vanadium and stainless steel. Stainless steel is losing favour due to its negative effects on the environment.
Hooks fall into six major categories; “J” hooks, Circle hooks, treble hooks, wire hooks, thick hooks, and Kahle hooks. The most popular hooks are “J” hooks.
Due to the wide range of hook styles and sizes including hooks embedded into lures such as fishing flies, it is important to have a fishing hook threader apparatus and methods that provide the user with reliable single attempt threading for appropriate hook size ranges. The appropriate range of sizes starts with the smallest of hooks (approximately #12) and extent up to a size whereby the eyelet is so large that a threading device or apparatus is not needed depending on the user.
Hooks with particularly small eyelets, thin shanks, or short shanks are especially hard to thread. For this reason no threading devices have emerged that can assist the operator to thread a full range of hooks including the particularly small eyelets, thin shanks, or short exposed shanks. Hooks are classified by “sizes”—for example, a size 1 hook is larger than a size 7. Examples of hook sizes difficult to thread include the smallest fishing flies and the smallest hook sizes in the range of #12 to #32 and including fine wire shanks.
With regard to bodied hooks such as weighted hooks or lure hooks including for example, fly hooks, a particularly short exposed shank length as measured by the distance from the eyelet to the body having an approximate length of 0.14 inches (3.56 mm) or less.
There has been a long standing need for an easy to use threading apparatus or facility along with straightforward methods including a simplified method and enhanced methods that can be used effectively and reliably over a full range of hook sizes, shapes, and configurations.
Due to the wide variety of hooks, lures, and weighted hooks regarding sizes and shapes, creating and designing a threading apparatus or facility that is inclusive and effective has required much knowledge, effort, and testing to complete.
This invention solves the fisherman's fish hook threading needs with a simple, easy to use, low cost apparatus with expedient and effective methods of using the threading apparatus or facility. It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide such an apparatus and associated methods for threading a wide range of fishing hook sizes, shapes, and configurations.